Welcoming questions
- Can you give us an overview of your finance career and how you grew into a controller role?
- What do you enjoy most about leading an accounting function, and what part do you find hardest?
Role-specific / technical competencies
- Describe the close process you currently own: timeline, team, and the controls built into it. What would you change if you could?
- Tell us about an internal control you designed or strengthened. What risk did it address and how did you get people to follow it?
- How do you prepare for and manage an external audit? Walk us through last year's audit from planning to sign-off.
- What is your approach to cash flow management and short-term liquidity planning, especially in a tight quarter?
- Describe an accounting system or ERP change you led. How did you protect reporting quality during the transition?
Behavioural & culture fit
- Tell us about a time you had to deliver bad financial news to leadership. How did you frame it and what happened next?
- Describe how you have built or restructured an accounting team. What did you look for in hires and how did you develop them?
- Give an example of a time you refused to book something the way a senior stakeholder wanted. How did you handle it?
Problem-solving / case
- You join us and discover the last three closes each took over 15 business days with recurring post-close adjustments. What do you do in your first 90 days?
- Mid-year, you find that deferred revenue has been calculated incorrectly for several quarters and the cumulative impact is material. Walk us through your response, from quantification to communication.
- The company is preparing for due diligence in six months and has never been audited. How do you get the books and the team ready, and in what order?
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